When the Yankees visited Oakland in April, the A’s weren’t scoring very much, but neither were their opponents. Although the Athletics’ roster has been devastated by injuries[1], not much has really changed. The A’s have the stingiest pitching staff in the AL despite injuries to the top three men in their bullpen and would-be ace Rich Harden, who has been regulated to relief since being activated last week.

Meanwhile, the offense got Mark Kotsay and Dan Johnson back only to lose Milton Bradley and Mike Piazza, the former’s injury problems reaching the point that the A’s decided to designate him for assignment rather than deal with them. Jason Kendall is having a historically awful season (39 OPS+), but is still holding on to the starting catching job. Kotsay and former Rookie of the Year Bobby Crosby have been awful (both hitting roughly .240/.290/.350), but Kotsay is still starting over rookie sensation Travis Buck. Eric Chavez is having his worst season since he was a 21-year-old rookie and his third disappointing season in a row, prompting our Toaster colleagues[2] to doubt his commitment to his game. Mix in Shannon Stewart slugging .391 from a corner outfield position and Dan Johnson and Nick Swisher each slugging roughly .450 from first base and right field respectively and you’ve got a pretty tepid offense that’s relying way too much on 28-year-old rookie cleanup hitter Jack Cust. Indeed, the A’s have scored the second fewest runs per game in the AL thus far (though Ryan Armbrust[3] points out that they’ve been better of late–not necessarily good, but better).

What’s changed is that when the A’s and Yankees last met, the two teams were utter opposites: the Yankees scored a ton of runs and gave up a ton of runs, while the A’s did neither. The A’s haven’t changed, but the Yankees have solved their pitching woes only to see their offense stumble. On the just completed road trip, including the eight innings of last night’s suspended game, the Yankees scored 3.22 runs per game and allowed 4.67. The latter number isn’t a far cry from their overall season average (4.57), but the former belies their fourth-place major league rank in runs scored per game. In essence, then, the Yankees will have to try to outpitch the A’s this weekend, which means they’ll likely be helping[4] yet another stumbling team (the A’s are 3-9 in their last dozen games entering tonight) get back on stride.

Tonight Kei Igawa tries to outpitch Joe Kennedy. The good news is that Kennedy has walked more than he’s struck out this year and has a 7.71 ERA over his last three starts. Igawa, meanwhile, will look to build on his four Steve Austin innings[5] from San Francisco.